Parc Ferme: Track limits and other illusionary problems

The FIA Stewards must have consumed a medium-sized rainforest producing the necessary supporting paperwork. Never were so many trees sacrificed in vain and wax crayons needlessly consumed.

The post-mortem of infringements and subsequent penalties handed out after the race only served to underline the farcical nature of the situation.

It appears some suffer from that rare eye disorder mentioned above. This affliction is an intermittent driver malady that normally only flares up when they have done something they should not have. For those unfamiliar with the symptoms, it temporarily causes a loss in a driver’s spatial awareness.

It often flares up when there is an absence of grass or an equally undesirable surface beyond the white lines. I base this on the fact that when the grass is present, they rarely have a problem identifying where the track ends and the non-track starts. However, when the non-track is replaced with tarmac or something with reasonable grip, the white lines that demark its extent become strangely invisible.

The severity of the affliction at the Austrian Grand Prix is not consistent between drivers or in its duration. Max suffered in FP1 and Qualifying, but in the races, it completely disappeared. Fernando Alonso admirably never seemed to suffer at all, whereas Esteban Ocon was almost bedridden in the Sunday race! The shape of the track hasn’t changed from last year. Despite this fact and the availability of sophisticated simulators, many drivers still have to learn the location of its limits.

This is an FIA regulation and circuit specification issue, not the Stewards. If they don’t implement the regulations, there will be outrage from the driver's Teams and fans. Yet when they do, there is outrage from the driver's, teams and fans.

The solution, of course, is simple. Either A: Return the grass or something equally disagreeable in grip terms to the other side of the white lines for around four meters. This would allow life to deliver justice over track infringements. To be fair, something Neil Wittich – F1’s Race Director, requested last year. However, the boys from Moto GP, who also use the circuit, said “No” on safety issues.

Option B requires the Teams to rig up a device that detects the car's close proximity to the track’s edge. Having done so, the system could then re-route some of the battery voltage to a sensitive area of the driver's body, alerting him that he’s in danger of having his lap time deleted. Either way, the ability to discern what is and is not the track would no doubt miraculously return. Rainforests could then exhale a sigh of relief, and crayon production could return to normal levels.

On a separate note, but in a similar vein, the murmurings of driver discontent over the withdrawal of their comfort blankets continue. By comfort blankets, I, of course, mean tyre warmers. It’s been pointed out that they never had them in the lower Formulas and have just become used to being cosseted by prodigious F1 budgets.

Drivers have countered this with “Heavier cars, higher corner loads etc …” but surely, aren’t the corner loads controlled by their right foot? And it is year two of the “new” heavy cars; shouldn’t they be becoming acclimatised to their mass by now?

Change is always painful, but together with erroneous official calls, inevitable. It can’t be beyond the ken of the world's top twenty race drivers to manage “cold” tyres. I mean couldn’t they think outside of the box and do something radically different like, I don’t know, maybe, taking it a bit easier until their tyres get up to temperature?